


you wore out a path to my door

by wanderNavi



Series: than the certainty that all of this will end [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: character list updated now that this is longer, messed up fairy tales, robin didn't quite come back he way he hoped he would
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-07-05 13:31:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15864609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderNavi/pseuds/wanderNavi
Summary: “Got a visit a while back. Everyone did. Chrom’s ready to tear everything down, brick by brick, looking for you, now that he knows that you’re back, after all these years. Was like if he couldn’t decide if he was happy that you were alive or enraged that you didn’t even say hi.”Donnel’s nails are cracked and the calluses on his hands are crowded and rough.“There is some unfinished business I need to take care of,” Robin tells him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One day I will remember how to actually title things again. Anyways, this one is [Dear Doubt by Michael Schulte](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vTTvWWNUNw).

Entering the cathedral, Robin doesn’t burn or crumble into ash or dissipate into wind or any other unpleasant, theatrical ends. The cavernous air swallows the sound of his footsteps. How does Naga feel towards this momentous curvature of architecture erected in her name? The prayers and offerings and adoration given to her, where ever she is now?

Not all the cups are filled with lit candles. He takes a candle from the small pile to the side. The white wax is smooth under his nails, the wick still stiff. It is a small dollop of heat that will dissipate soon. The candle drops into the cup with a clack and Robin lights it with borrowed flame taken from the other candles already lit. He blows the stick off and sinks the embers into sand with a hiss.

There will be a sermon in the evening. He should leave before then.

Yet he lingers, face turned to the ceiling, trying to make out the grain of the carved rocks and if the veins of the decorative leaves follow the natural lines.

* * *

He’s not certain which memories are his and which are Grima’s sometimes. The events and pasts catch and grind at each other, wearing down all the edges.

There’s a folk tale about hearts and old magic, unbound by words and paper and measured instead by will and fervor. Ends set in destiny. Robin recalls that the tale goes something like:

There is a man, young as vigor demands, fair of heart and fair of mind. The standard opening as so many other tales run by. And there is the other staple, the component the tale cannot live without, the evil. Good cannot live without evil to conquer, evil cannot live without good to conquer in these stories.

A great beast roams the country at night. Its head tosses and its eyes glare and its teeth gnash and its claws rind. Its howls speak and strike terror.

“I’ll take your sons and daughters,” the beast promises. “I’ll take them one by one. I’ll measure them and judge them worthy and feast on the flesh. And the worthiest of all, I’ll eat the heart and take the power, so none can stop me.”

And every night, the beast meets its promise, snatching children and adolescents, one at a time. Those who try to hide in their houses, the beast chases out with fire. Those who stay to burn instead, the beast still hunts, slinking among the roaring coals, the heat only a gentle tickle. Those who fight back, the beast slashes into pieces, swords and arrows shattering on its black sticky hide.

The normal folk tale of terror, creeping from village to village. A visiting plague, the beast is fear and fears the day a blade will sing true and finally slay it, and so it steals the hearts full of youth and vigor and consumes the energy. The more it eats, the greater its strength, the greater its hunger.

The boy, a prince, as the stories tend to go for who else can afford the gleaming horse, the polished armor, the decorated shield, the intricate sword, rides off one day to face the beast. He follows the rotten trail of the beast and the scent of terror left behind, a hound of righteousness.

He rides his steed across the meadows and plains and rides towards the mountains. A spirit crosses his path.

* * *

Robin keeps his hood raised all the time now. The long cloth covers his face with obscuring shadows, but it is not his normal coat. The patterns are too distinctly known now. Instead, he travels under the wraps of a plain roll of cloth, black browning with dirt and dust.

Robin’s eyes are tinted red now.

He stays away from Ylisstol’s castle, not even certain why. Because his last memory of Chrom is the prince’s frustrated yelling and hands desperately trying to grab his? Because his friends will shunt him into a bed immediately for rest and warp the history of his years away? Because he remembers his mother now, at the cost of remembering his hands slaying the world?

Because sometimes at night, he still feels Grima shifting, the eyes blinking with fatigue, trying to fight against death now that it’s the dragon’s turn?

Ylisse’s civilians are free flowing with the gossip they share over a round or several of drinks. The years of seeing spies around every corner and in every shadow are long over. Robin listens to them all: the new captain of the guard, the Pegasus Knights’ revival, weddings, passings, reforms. All the gossip, true and false. Ylisse prospers and sometimes when Robin blinks, Ylisse burns.

Somehow, despite the years, Robin’s network of informants never completely dissolved and is still holding together loosely. Who they are reporting to, Robin can’t discern. Are they just compiling reams of information in case he comes back? Or has Robin been replaced? He certainly hopes Chrom isn’t running around without someone to reign him back. In towns and harbors, Robin watches his scouts and moves on silently.

He strikes to the south east. For some reason, Donnel didn’t stay in the armed forces as Robin hoped but went back home for good. He’s sorry to see good potential go, especially someone who can help strengthen relations between the nobles and the general forces. At the same times, Robin can hardly stop someone’s chosen path or Donnel seeking peaceful living. Running across continents stopping apocalypses can sate anyone’s thirst for adventure.

Fall is coming in with a rush when Robin reaches the village. The harvest must be soon, if not started already. The inn is little more than some spare rooms built into the largest house. Donnel is equally easy to find.

He’s … clearly older now. No longer a teenager tagging along, proving his worth. Most disconcerting is seeing Donnel without his pot on his head anymore. Robin almost wants to find where it’s gone and slam it back over the younger man’s hair which has apparently never met a brush before. Vaguely, Robin feels betrayed by fate.

Donnel recognizes the presence of a stranger in the vicinity soon enough. Robin’s second morning in Farfort, Donnel tracks him down.

They stand eye to eye now. Donnel stares at Robin’s cloak balefully. “Ya know, Chrom’s in an uproar.”

Ah. So, they were still in touch.

* * *

The prince halts and dismounts to bow to the spirit. The spirit’s face is as bronzed as their hair is pale and they watch with burning amber eyes. The air around them tastes of sharp ozone and blows with a hot wind.

“Not every day a prince rides these roads with such haste. What duty calls you?” says the spirit.

“There is a beast that roams the lands unchallenged. I intend to challenge it,” says the prince.

“So it may eat you along with the sons and daughters perished in its belly and heart?” says the spirit.

“You asked my duty,” says the prince, “and this is my duty.”

“By who’s command?”

“My soul.”

Thunder crumbles around the spirit. They press a stone into the prince’s hand and sighs. “If you go alone and mortal, you’ll die before you can draw the first strike. Too many have tried as you have and bled out over the beast’s tongue. Keep this stone with you, and now we must ride west instead.”

“West?” asks the prince.

“First, you must be blessed.”

The spirit mounts behind the prince and hot breath pushes into his hair.

“Ride, dear prince. You must ride.”

The path west is treacherous with stone-faced mountains and steep deserts. The spirit rides at the prince’s back, breath a murmur of instructions and sounds. They guide the prince though passes and caverns the horse can travel though and so the small party may avoid hostile fiends. For the beast isn’t the only evil and men smile while the blade enters the honorable heart and spirits smile while a stolen soul dances in their hands.

In the distance, a great tree rises and the spirit’s one-sided conversation ebbs.

“When you and your blade are blessed, do not retreat, do not halt. What comes out of the flames and your ashes will shine bright and strong, supplement to your valor. Keep your mind sharp and attentive and strike true.”

The prince asks, “How do I repay you? Other spirits haven’t helped, and many others died. Yet here you give me a bon and guide me away from a spar with death. I cannot leave you uncompensated.”

“Slay the beast,” said the spirit, “and that will be enough for now.”

When the setting sun casts the tree’s shadows far enough to reach them, the spirit lightly dismounts. “This is the farthest I can go,” they declare. “I’m not invited further.”

The prince turns towards the spirit with concern. “Will you wait for me here and accompany my journey back?”

The spirit shakes their head and the sunset light sets their hair into a fire of color. “Not here. I must leave now.”

And the prince watches the spirit dissipate into the wind.

* * *

“Got a visit a while back. Everyone did. Chrom’s ready to tear everything down, brick by brick, looking for you, now that he knows that you’re back, after all these years. Was like if he couldn’t decide if he was happy that you were alive or enraged that you didn’t even say hi.”

Donnel’s nails are cracked and the calluses on his hands are crowded and rough. He still practices with the sword and bow.

“There is some unfinished business I need to take care of,” Robin tells him. “I haven’t returned the way Chrom wants me to yet, so delaying the reunion is for the better. The coat is too conspicuous, but I trust that it will be taken care of well at the castle.”

“So, you left it hanging in your old room just like that?”

“Yes.” Robin glares down into the cup in his hands. “How many times do I have to tell Chrom to be more careful? What was he thinking traipsing up and down the land like that? Did he expect to find me in some field again, ready for a hand to help me up?”

“I reckon he was,” Donnel says gently. “He’s a good friend, a good Exalt that way. Robin, look me in the eye.”

Robin grits his teeth and drinks from the cup instead. The changes to his body are clear enough that Donnel doesn’t even need to look at his eyes to know something is wrong. There’re the scales trailing down his jawline and into the collar of his shirt. The sharp nails that Robin files down every week so they don’t rip through his gloves. What might, if Robin doesn’t go into mild hysteria when he thinks about it, be the start of horns growing in at the sides of his face. The writhing mass of magic flowing in his veins, eager to lash out and fight. Grima left impressions on Robin’s body in retribution for struggling over control in the dark void they dropped into after Robin struck the killing blow years ago.

“Robin.”

Robin knows why he came to Donnel first. The politics of nobles and the courts of Ylisstol grates on Robin, this he knows from those few years of peace in this timeline with his unborrowed memories. Donnel is simple as the fresh air in the warm dawn of summer, promising uncompromising heat and clear skies to nourish the crops. Donnel is straightforward, without the hidden motives that characterize conversations with nearly everyone else Robin knows.

Donnel waits him out, and finally with a sigh, Robin looks up at Donnel. The sun coming in through the windows softens Donnel’s face, belying the truth that Robin’s watched the younger man charge out into a field of Risen by himself and return with hardly a scratch. Even the rest of the house that they’re sitting in, Donnel’s house, muffles the impression of his abilities.

“You don’t want to go back into service, do you, Donnel?” Robin asks instead of acknowledging the conversation topic at hand.

The expression Donnel gives him, says clearly with disapproval that he’ll be wrenching Robin back to the topic about Chrom, but he humors Robin by answering, “No. Those couple of years of traveling across two continents and fighting far and wide are enough. This is my family’s farm, and I’m the son to inherit it. I’m bound to taking care of the grounds, and it’s good work. I get to stay with my family and childhood friends here.”

Instead of relegated to Ylisstol’s edges forever despite his well-deserved honors, Robin fills in. Robin nods absentmindedly and sips further from the cup. “Think I can stay here a while?”

* * *

The tree’s attendants draw the prince up, high above the ground. The leaves are silent, and the birds are still as they climb the carved steps. They bath the prince in cold, clear spring water and wrap his body in sheets of gold, silver, bronze. His weapons and armor dips into pools of gemstones. They push twisting scepters of platinum and aluminum into his hands.

Then they toss the prince into a blazing pit.

Of course, the prince is blessed as the phoenix are blessed, rising from his ashes, clutching the spirit’s stone in one hand and his blade in the other hand. The fire forges an edge hard and sharp, capable of cutting into obsidian and dark gemstones.

Of course, the prince burns on the great tree, gasping for air in the high branches, muffled by the clouds’ haze.

Of course, the prince rides back east, the wind in his wake pushing him forward.

Of course, that’s how these stories go.

The beast shivers with the creeping knowledge, the floating whispers, and with desperate roars, eats like a glutton. Judgement leaves for madness and the prince’s heart burns in the beast’s eyes. To eat this live coal is to die. To eat this live coal is the greatest temptation of them all. To eat this live coal is triumph.

The prince rides hard, over the deserts, over the mountains, over the plains, over the paths, over the meadows, over the crossroads where once he was stopped. He shines, radiant, magic pooling in protective embraces around him. The brighter he burns, the colder the spirit’s stone grows.

An army comes for the shuddering beast and the spirit sighs, fading and translucent.

* * *

Nowi presses firm fingers under Robin’s tired eyes and skitters over the scales on his arms. She whistles with fascination at the nobs growing above his ears. “You’ve had a rough time, haven’t you?” she asks and Robin sinks into her touch.

“A long, rough time,” he says. “Feels like I’ve been away longer than the calendars tell me.”

She clasps Robin’s hands in hers and he keeps his biting nails away from her skin as much as he can. “Well, you’re here now and probably as helpful to Donnel on the farm as I am. Come with me outside. It’s too beautiful a day to say cooped up inside when we can play.”

There’s no war now to call for Robin’s attention, and no calling for denying Nowi’s fun. He follows her tugging to outside the snug house Donnel built past the pastures and fields. Farfort is a small town at best and small towns hold no secrets. Donnel and Nowi’s neighbors are going to want to know about Robin’s presence, but he’s in no shape to answer questions. He’s in no shape for the gossip to spread past the village’s borders. He’s in no shape for Chrom’s clear-eyed stare.

The wind already bites with autumn’s crispness and going up the smooth mountains, the air only chills further. Nowi chatters at Robin about the fruits and flowers that grow in the mountain forest, about the wildlife she and Donnel hunt, about the years that passed blinking by. Robin softly laughs at the clearing she brings him to, the edges maintained with dragon fire. She plays here, and he doesn’t ask where Nah is, absent as she is from Nowi’s words and home.

They sit on a pile of smooth stones and see who can throw pebbles hardest and farthest. When Robin’s arms finally start growing sore, Nowi says, “Donnel keeps in touch with everyone through letters. He’s planning on sending some out tonight. If you really don’t want us to mention that you’re here, we’ll do that. But Donnel doesn’t agree with your reasons.”

“I know,” Robin says and listens to bird song, frog song, cricket song. “Thank you.”

His mother told him before that she wished he could have siblings. But they were on the run and raising one child was hard enough. There was no time for siblings, for staying in one place for long, for strong friendships. There was no time for whatever fantasies his mother thought of when she was young herself, lying in bed in the Plegian heat, dreaming under the stars about fates and futures.

Robin loves his family among the Shepherds, but the memory of lightning punching the breath out of Chrom’s lungs was bad enough on its own. Cutting down Stahl and Cordelia, burning Sumia down from the sky, too much keeps the memories company. Grima howled with laughter when Robin screamed at the revelations in that dark pitch, the dragon crowing, “Here’s my gift, here’s my bribe, take it my small tactician, take it my avatar!”

With a fake smile, Robin takes Nowi’s hand and says, “Let’s just play, let’s just have fun. I’m not ready yet.”

And Nowi, bless her, plays.

* * *

The beast dies.

When the celebrations are done and the dead honored, the prince takes out the stone he kept tucked safely away in a swaddle of cloth and watches mutely at the cracked pieces tumble out of his hands.

There’s no corpse, there’s no cadaver. Holding the dusty cloth, the radiant prince knows that the spirit is dead, slain when his sword pierced the beast’s bloated stolen hearts.

(The details are crumbling and ashen. Robin scrambles to shift through the memories that are his that are not his that are _his_. Whose heart is whose, where does it all go. Whose blade –)

* * *

A yawn cracking his jaws open, Robin stumbles out of bed and towards the living room. “Donnel, what’s going on –”

He freezes at Frederick’s stare. Donnel is at the side, face sincere, “I’m sorry Robin, I didn’t know, he just got here –”

Donnel tells the truth. There’s a fleck of mud on Frederick’s boots, his hair’s a mess from the winter wind, red tinges his cheeks. The last time Robin saw Frederick, his voice is ringing over the wind and Risen blood speckles his armor. The last time Robin saw Frederick, his face is already pale and stiff, the work of Risen long before Robin arrived with crackling fire and lightning. Gods, Robin isn’t ready.

“Lukas told me I could find you here,” Frederick says and well, that answers Robin’s question of who his scouts are reporting to.

It’s too damn early and Robin works his mouth soundlessly. “I’m not going back to Ylisstol,” how are these words coming out, Robin thinks his heart is freezing up, “I’m not going back to Ylisstol.”

I’m not going back to Chrom.

Frederick reaches into his bag and tosses out a parcel of cloth. Robin’s coat thumps to the floor at his feet.

“No,” Frederick agrees, and Robin picks up the coat with shaking hands. The tears are mended and the accents gleam from a fresh wash. Frederick’s faithful work. “I’m taking you to see Naga.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, I think this can stand alone, but I might come back with the second half later.
> 
> Edit: _well, guess I won't make this a series_. Changed the designation from complete to incomplete with more to come.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Step One: Take Robin to Naga  
> Step Two: ???  
> Step Three: Profit

Chrom is with Frederick when the servant runs in, clutching something dirty and purple. Maids and servants clean the castle regularly least vermin and insects take up permanent residence. The feather duster is still stashed in the servant’s belt while she yells over the clash of guardsmen sparing, “Captain, there’s been an intruder into the castle. I found this in one of the unused bedrooms.”

She shakes out the cloth and the breath sticks in Chrom’s throat. He hasn’t seen Robin’s coat in almost a decade and finds a jolt of disappointment for forgetting the details, the stiches, the dyed leather. Or this much dried blood. Why is there this much blood, Robin loved striking from a distance and clean kills.

Frowning, Frederick takes the coat. “Go find Knight Sully and Pegasus Knight Cordelia and have them sweep for other traces from the intruder. Tell them to report to me when they’re done.”

“Yes, sir,” and the servant runs back out.

Frederick wheels upon Chrom and says, “You are not leaving.”

“Frederick!”

“No, you have duties here in Ylisstol, milord. This can be a replication, some trick, to what ends, I intend to find out before I let you run yourself ragged all over the countryside. There’s a breach into the very castle.”

Frederick barks at one of the guardsmen to take over overseeing the training and drags Chrom away from the courtyard before they make a spectacle for all to watch.

Chrom tugs on the coat and reluctantly Frederick lets it go. “Frederick, it’s Robin, it has to be, what’s even the point of snaring the trap with Robin’s coat like this, it’s been –”

He rubs at the inside lining and rust brown flakes come off onto his fingertips. “Why is there so much blood on the inside?”

It’s been so long, too long, since Chrom went to the wing where Robin’s old room is, but his feet are faithful and remember the steps. Frederick calls after his back as Chrom picks up into a run, “Milord, you have a council meeting! Milord! Chrom!”

Nothing is where Robin left it. His belongings are all carefully tucked onto shelves and into drawers, but it’s not Robin’s organized chaos. Chrom sinks onto the bed and stares at the coat in his hands.

It’s been almost a decade.

* * *

Robin prefers the march to riding, but Frederick’s face is uncompromising and Nowi helps bundle them in warm scarves warding off the wind. Frederick puts the reigns of the second horse in Robin’s hands. He says to his hosts of the last many weeks, “Thank you for letting me stay on your lovely farm.”

Donnel waves him off with a relieved smile. “It’s no problem, Robin. Look after ya self and safe passage. I hope you get better.”

“Come back when you can!” Nowi chirps. “Don’t forget about us!”

Robin laughs and Frederick spurs his horse forward. “Good bye!”

They watch him leave.

Frederick takes them north. The island isn’t large, just shy of Carrion Isle’s bleak size, and far more inviting. There are fewer old memories attached. After all, what care did Grima have for a small patch of land at the corners of a continent? Problems from bandits and infighting did their job for them, no need to send more than a few Risen in harassment. At first, the travel is silent. Then, Frederick says, “You gave us a fright.”

“Which time?” Robin asks and Frederick snorts inelegantly.

“Your coat. Where was all the blood from?”

Robin stares ahead at the unchanging scenery, the dirt path that will shrug green shirts on and off with the seasons, the quiet Frederick is dragging him out of. The island will never experience the hard snowstorms of Ferox and the permanent slick, muddy white, but the sky is the same steel gray. The taste of winter fills his mouth with one deep breath after another. “Old wounds. Long healed now.”

“Chrom found it uncharacteristic for you to take a hit so severe.”

“I died, Frederick,” Robin snaps. “Please leave it alone.”

They arrive in time for the next boat off the island. Fishermen willing to brave the cold waters left for the sea much earlier into the dawn and the small harbor is quiet. Pockets of heat and noise spill out, warm and orange, each time a door swings open. Frederick in his moneyed riding gear and coats and Robin hiding in his hood stand out. The boat can’t take them directly to the peninsula Mount Prism is on, and a second boat will be necessary. They get on regardless and Robin has a sneaking suspicion that Frederick paid more gold from his pouch than an individual from these parts would have.

The wind off the sea bites hard and Robin pulls his coats close and shivers. His body is made for the desert. He’s experienced colder. There were a few childhood years spent drifting through Ferox, wherever gold paid for his mother’s sword. There were a few years of hunting the children in the dead of winter nights. There were the last few years.

Frederick walks onto the deck and watches Robin watching the waves. Nowi let him stare in silence at shifting colors and light and Frederick does the same. Their older ages give them more patience, though Nowi rarely.

“Dark,” Robin finally shares over the noise from the crew. “It was dark. And flat. Where I was. With only memories and Grima to keep me company.”

“You’re back now,” Frederick says, draping one more layer of fur over Robin’s shoulders.

“Doesn’t feel like it sometimes.”

* * *

Grima remembers a folk tale picked up carelessly like a pebble taken from the pond’s shore. They toss it hard into the warm, red waters of their struggling avatar. Skip or sink, they do not care. It rumbles out of their throat:

All men must fall. All buildings, all monuments, all towers, all constructions built on ego and gods must fall. Even the world must fall.

The fisherman fishes in ruins and sells the fruits of the sea side by side with the fruits of dead men. He is the eldest of three and hasn’t seen his siblings in years. For when they split ways, he said, “I shall take the sea.”

For when they split ways, the younger brother said, “I shall take the land.”

For when they split ways, the younger sister said, “I shall take the air.”

He hasn’t seen them in years when he cuts open a fish, large as his torso, and finds a skull that rattles in his hands, “Hello.”

“Hello,” the fisherman says back. He cleans the skull and wipes the salt off his hands.

“Hello, yes,” the skull says. It’s long gone eyes watch the fisherman’s hands, the fisherman’s knives, the fisherman’s wares. It asks, “When was the last time you heard from your brother?”

* * *

The land on this peninsula is rockier and when they set up camp Frederick checks over the horses’ shoes. Robin checks over his coat.

His mother stitched it together at night, by candlelight, and tells him tales to pass time until his eyelids grow too heavy. She wove each story and memory like a protective talisman from the oldest lands. On a sleeve, the triumph of a general. On the other, the cunning of a princess. Each tale is a lesson.

The candles added a golden hue to her hair, same as the gold in her voice, same as the gold in her family that attracted the attention of Validar and men of his like. She rubs her callused fingertips together while picking up the spools of thread and the needles carved from thin bones. “My little songbird,” she’d laugh, “your mother’s hands are getting too rough for this work.”

Frederick’s stitches are tighter than his mother’s.

The older man sits next to Robin, gaze hovering over his face. The scales are creeping higher, towards the dip between his jaw and cheekbone, glowing darkly with the campfire’s reflection. Robin sighs. “You can ask.”

“Do you know how this happened?” Frederick asks.

Tired, Robin tips into his side, a horn digging into the curve of Frederick’s shoulder. “I died, Frederick.”

In the dark, Robin couldn’t see nor was there anything to see. Grima wrapped around him, suffocating and cold, stiff and piercing. Robin remembers his double, the other body, also being there. He doesn’t remember where it went.

“I don’t know why these changes are happening to me, but I can guess. Grima is a dragon that can come back from the dead. Our hearts are the same and we were in the dark together. Something bled together. This is the price for my return.”

“Lukas only made it sound like you were turning into a manakete. He didn’t mention the horns or the rest.”

Robin pushes a sleeve up an inch and waves the scaled arm in their faces. “I’ve been in hiding all my life. Think I couldn’t hide a few more odd things on my skin? The horns though –” he frowns, “the horns are more recent. Make me colder.”

With a gentle nudge, Frederick pushes Robin off his shoulder and looks at him head-on. The firelight dances over his face, deepening the lines setting in. “What else do you think might bleed over between you and Grima?”

“More magical ability? I don’t need books as much. Maybe I will settle into something close to a manakete? Age less, the future body didn’t look like he lived an additional decade on me. Then again, this didn’t happen when Grima took over.”

“When Grima took over.” Frederick’s expression hardens and Robin winces at the wary mask slamming down.

“The children’s future, the other timeline. I remember it.” He pushes off from the seat and stumbles toward the tent. “I remember my past. I have it all now.”

Frederick also rises, a movement of sound, of heavy cloth and metal rubbing together. “Robin, I’m not done.”

“Good night, Frederick,” he says and then ducks into the tent.

There’s an explosive sigh outside, but the tent entrance doesn’t open.

“You’ve been haunting us, Robin.”

* * *

This is not the fisherman’s first talking skull, but the others only chattered about fish and the sea before falling silent, slack-jawed. He sets out the driftwood of civilizations and the fillets of the giant fish while answering, “Years. Not since we split ways.”

“Not even once?” the skull wheedles. It rattles away from the wares with the air that it distinctly wishes it still had a nose to turn up.

“Not even once,” the fisherman says and bats the skull back among the twisting green metal.

No one buys the skull though and its jaw never slackens. It chatters about fish and the sea, but more often it chatters about magic and kingdoms. Women and men on thrones and armies they commanded and the lives they fell. The skull abhors silence and speaks enough for a full crew. The fisherman waits it out, patient as the dark depths.

Finally, it admits, “I think your brother has my body,” and the fisherman packs up his tools and wares, calm as can be.

The next morning, he turns his back to the sea and walks.

* * *

The horns do make his head feel colder, so Robin doesn’t mind when there’s no boat to immediately take them across the frigid waters once more. Still, it’s faster to wait than ride in a loop over land. The inn only has one room available for them, which Robin does mind. Frederick herds him into the room before Robin can stage a childish protest by not help carrying their bags.

There’s a small cloudy mirror by the washbasin and Robin winces at his reflection. He and Frederick both need a shave, but the scales make a frightful mess on his face. The horns thankfully, have not grown longer, small jutting points that slice into his peripheral vision.

His body craves the heat boiling off summer sands and more than once, Frederick shakes him awake from a pile of blankets in smoldering distance from the fireplace.

“Are you sick?” Frederick asks, and Robin shakes his head.

“Just cold and there’s nothing to read.”

Frederick accepts the answer with a frown and watchful eyes. Robin doesn’t miss the broth he’s given and sips it with mutters about mother bears.

Sleet comes down in slow sheets when the boat is ready to depart, heading towards peeks of sunlight cutting through the clouds. This time, the crew keeps them mostly below deck and Robin passes time by flicking his sharp nails in Frederick’s face.

He bats the hands away. “Did your mind freeze at the maturity of a child?”

“You’ve met Nowi,” Robin counters. Frowns. “Speaking of children, who let Morgan settle down in Chon’sin?”

“In the chaos of Grima falling over a _sea_ , she somehow started to bond with Say’ri and her cohort. The future children in general split up for the four winds, now that their main task was done. Morgan said she was going to help Say’ri stabilize Chon’sin and the situation at Valm at large.” Frederick’s eyes lock Robin’s red, red gaze. “She and Say’ri were both mourning for family they hold dear.”

Wordless, Robin nods and leans against the wall and the swaying of the ship. Mentioning Morgan is a mistake and with his heart freezing with fear, Robin feels the interest and shifting scales grinding with the thunderous rumble of earthquakes rolling through the back of his mind. The dragon’s been quiet, but never lets him fully forget they’re there.

It hounds his head, _here’s my bribe_ , the stink of battle and fire, the acid taste in the air, and the wet sticking to claws and teeth. Songs of déjà vu in old languages Robin can’t understand as he bares his fangs, their fangs, at Naga, at humans.

“Blood magic is a sorry inheritance,” his mother said sadly, thumbs rubbing at the brand on his hand. She makes him drink a vile concoction when the hunters on their trail get too close and it burns his throat as it goes down, with fitful coughs around sips of water. “My little songbird, I’m so sorry.”

The ship rolls them all to sleep.

* * *

The fisherman knocks on the wooden door of his younger brother’s stone house. Fine patterns are chiseled into the masonry and a hammering inside stops. The skull bit the fisherman when he tried to put it into the bag that morning, so he cradles it under an arm. The kiln and forge have burnished his brother’s face and his hair is as smoky black as ever and he greets the fisherman with surprise.

“Why has your hair turned white?” the brother asks when they are seated at a small rickety table with drinks.

“The sun bleaches it and the magic drains it.”

“Magic, yes, I found the most amazing thing while digging.”

The brother brings them to a skeleton torso with its arms crossed, fingers tapping with a _kaktd, kaktd, kaktd_. “That’s mine!” the skull crows out and the arms unfold in a gesture for the skull. The brothers trade uneasy glances at the undead greed tugging the bones together, but the fisherman sets the skull in the skeletal hands regardless. It fits on with a satisfied hum and a smooth click and the skeleton’s joyful applauses raise harsh goosebumps on the fisherman’s skin.

The skull looks between the two men and grins a ghost grin full of ghost fangs, “Your sister has my legs and you will bring me to her.”

Like puppets on strings, the next morning they turn their backs to the stone house and the soft hills.

* * *

The land is still as divine and picturesque as Robin remembers. Even the snowfall on the winter yellow blades of grass is beautiful. Naga’s power is stronger here than ever. Mount Prism rises in the distance and Robin shivers with unease, lifting his hood to see the land better.

“Frederick are we sure this is right?” and he’s shaking in the divine cold harder than he’s shaken anywhere else. There’s agitation in his skull and humming in his bones and Grima is awake, too awake, growling and with hackles raised. Robin’s not welcome here, they’ve never been. Glaring light pierces into Robin’s eyes, blinding them and of course it was useless sending Risen here, what a fool they were, these rivers run through Naga’s veins, never an inch of sense.

Frederick takes his hand to help him dismount and Robin hisses when his boots hit the frozen ground. Cold fire runs under the ground, stronger the closer they head to the mountain and its summit, and Robin wants to gag.

The response sounds like it’s coming through thick water, Frederick leading him, “I don’t think you should pay the price for Grima cheating death, not with all we’ve done to put the dragon down. None of us have any better idea for what we can do to help you and Naga seems like a sure bet.”

Robin drags weakly against Frederick, “No, no, no, please, Frederick, this can’t be right.”

He turns to them, grip unrelenting, “Robin, what are you do-”

They fly at him howling, breaking out of the human’s grip. How dare, how dare, _it’s so cold_ –

He slams onto the ground, breath knocked out, gasps fighting between coughs and back growing wet. Frederick looms over him, blood peeping through scratches on his face and breathing hard to keep Robin pinned down. The cold fire is too close now and Robin writhes against him, trying to escape, it’s too cold.

“Just knock me out, just take me out, what the hells are you even trying Frederick, what the _hells_ are you thinking bringing me back to Chrom, I can’t go back, I can never go back, I can’t–”

“ _Robin, shut up_.”

They whine and nothing’s making sense. All sorts of nonsense are coming out of Robin’s mouth, an endless iteration of _why, why, why_. He’s in absolutely no control anymore.

With a curse, Frederick lifts Robin into a fireman carry and keeps clear of the flailing claws and sharp horns and biting teeth.

“Naga help us,” the man mutters and begins the climb.

Hells, it’s burning in all the worst ways and Robin passes out.

* * *

The skeleton clatters and drags, clinging to the brothers on their climb up the mountains. The cold air doesn’t concern it nor the dizzying heights. Hard fingertips scramble on stone and pinch on their arms and shoulders, commanding onwards, onwards.

Birds greet them first, sharp beaks screeching and peeking. Ragged, the brothers continue their climb. The sister comes down from the sky, screaming desperately, “You fools! Have you forgotten why we split up, have you forgotten our task, have you forgotten a thousand years ago, why have you brought that evil here?”

But they are helpless to watch, as the skeleton fits its legs back on and laughs and laughs and laughs. All men must fall.

(“Truly,” Grima laughs, their hot, rotten breath washing over Robin, “I have everything to thank you for. You and all the other small humans faithfully carrying my blood.”

Their avatar keeps screaming, high and fearful, as the dark continues pulling their duplicate bodies apart.)

* * *

“We need to go west,” Frederick says, and Robin looks at him limply from the ground. They’re both exhausted from the ordeal at Mount Prism. Or rather, at Mount Prism’s base. Despite Frederick’s best efforts, they didn’t get remotely close to the summit. Naga’s magic blocked them off from further travel. “Tiki might be able to discern what to do, since we can’t ask Naga directly.”

Robin throws an arm back over his eyes, but it’s in an awkward slash across the face to avoid skewering himself. He mumbles through the layers of cloth, “That’s far.”

“It is,” Frederick agrees, “but at least this time, we’re not traveling with a whole army and supply convey.”

Robin laughs. “West it is, but…we can’t pass through Ylisstol. In the future, Naga’s power was able to concentrate there and who knows what will happen now that Grima’s influence is so near to the surface.”

There’s a noise of disgust and Robin snickers. “If we must.”

Shaking his shoulder, Frederick pulls Robin up off the ground. “We’ll travel across Regna Ferox and take a ship across to Valm.” In a mutter Robin’s probably not supposed to hear, Frederick adds, “Gods know what Chrom will get to with me away for so long.”

But Robin can’t help himself and laughs breathlessly, leaning against Frederick. It will be well into spring by the time he makes it back to Ylisstol while Robin will be in the wind somewhere else.

* * *

Sumia finds him still sitting on the bed that used to be Robin’s and says, “Cordelia told me.”

He’s numb from watching the shadows move across the room. The sunlight is golden and burning accusingly on the desk. She sits next to him and pulls the coat out of his stiff fingers.

The words are rough and full of barbs against his dry throat. “I should never have given up on him.”

“Oh, Chrom. We all miss him, but it was so long. I’ll have Frederick help fix the coat. Chrom.”

He wrenches his face from the empty inkwell to Sumia as she tugs him up. “Please get up.”

He gets up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nintendo, what is the geography in this game. Why is there suddenly a desert to the north of Farfort. _Nintendo, please explain._ Anyways, my story, my rules, Mirage Town, you’re getting moved to somewhere else.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frederick suffers for these idiots.

The shadows hunching in the snow bleed purple, trampled into the cold with each step the horses take. Trees cut the landscape’s form into thin, jagged ribbons.

The shortest day approaches swiftly, and their northward movement sends them rushing headlong into the night and snow. In a clear, sharp night, the moon grows, face turned down on their cloaked forms picking along a buried path. Robin, no Ylissian royalty, takes little effort to convince Frederick against the hassle of clearing a path.

In truth, Robin loses himself in the white and gray woods, reliant on Frederick’s focused navigation. Years of diplomatic relations with Ferox keep the maps tucked into bags and away from the damaging wet.

They reach the border wall in a snowstorm aspiring towards a blizzard. Robin chokes on the cold and the ice stabbing through his veins. They haven’t even entered Ferox yet, and he yearns departing.

Raimi no longer guards the border wall and some other knight padded with woolen warmth under the burning cold metal armor greets them. Her eyes skitter over Robin suspiciously and he draws back and into himself as Frederick negotiates their entrance. Snow melt soaks through the furs of his collar by the time Frederick finally leads them through the stone gates.

* * *

Lissa doesn’t join Chrom’s trips anymore. Hasn’t for the last few times. She seeks pleasure – purchasable treasures and tangible gifts – not off chance hopes and wishes wrung out by traveling winds and burned thin by crackling campfires. She grew up past dreams.

The searches also make Lucina nervous. It’s been too long, his daughter says. She already learned grief, and watching her father bargaining against fate drags out the years in her overwritten past. Lucina has her own regrets to settle.

And Morgan.

Robin’s daughter greets Chrom in Chon’sin’s silks and lacquer, the twists of dark purple contrasting her currently golden hair. Her tanned face stands out against the pale expressions on the other women in the court. The sunlight of training fields and expeditions glows from Morgan, ensnaring Chrom’s attention immediately.

“Exalt Chrom,” she greets with a bow.

“Hello Morgan,” he replies and ignores Stahl’s assessing eyes raking over the swords at her sides. Everyone knows the less than strictly diplomatic nature of this trip and Chrom always rather the blades and military over the spoken razors of politics. It’s not his field.

Morgan leads them deeper into the red and gold hall, past thick wooden gateways and through heavy metal doors. Incomes from the trading across the sea between Chon’sin and Plegia serve the western nation well in the rebuilding efforts. The kingdom heals over the occupation with unbowed determination. She says, “Lady Say’ri invites you to some tea for the evening. It’s a long journey on the sea from Ylisse. Talks can wait for when the morning and night refreshes us.”

Tea is a long, slow process. Morgan guides him again, later, leading him to the guest quarters. The gardens whisper alive with trees and reeds, the stone path draped on the ground through other juts of rock. The paper lantern sways at the end of the stick in her hand. She slides a door open and Chrom steps into the room, taking in the sparse furnishings in the dim glow.

Chrom remembers, before Grima came crashing down, Morgan’s laughter and clear eyes, the easy optimism tugging the other children into merriment. Without memory, yes, but far less haunted than Robin who peered into those cloudy future pasts with suspicion.

A Morgan who helped build a nation stares Chrom down in that dark room, face thrown between shadows and lights. “You’re here to try finding my father.”

“Exalt Chrom, he’s not here.”

“You think I haven’t been looking? I’ve been in Chon’sin for years.”

“Of course, I’m hurt. Of course, I grieved. I don’t remember my childhood, I don’t remember my mother, I don’t remember most of the future past I had with my father. Of course, I wish I knew more about my family than those too short snatches of scrambled memories but Exalt Chrom. It’s been years.

“We have to stop. How old are your daughters, Exalt? Don’t leave them behind for a man who made his peace as a martyr.”

* * *

He finds the travel through Ferox uninspiring. They trade out the horses for climbing and snow gear and pick their way through the valleys. In the dawns, snow sprints up the sides of harsh rock with gusts of wind shaking Robin’s robes urgently. He blinks slowly at the brilliance scattering across the ice. The light glares.

In about a week’s walk, they’ll arrive at Port Ferox. It can’t come soon enough for Robin.

“It’s a wonder your wayward mother never tried fleeing the continent all together,” Grima says. “Children are young and malleable, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind being a translator for mother dearest on one of the southern continents. The ships were scarcer but not nonexistent. You humans do pursue each other and wealth so persistently. Even Valm would have been far enough from the Grimleal.”

They huff in amusement, every sharp tooth grazing against the back of his neck, “But not from me, no, not from me.”

And there, a crux of a problem. The immensity of Grima’s awakened bulk pressing against Robin’s mind causes his thoughts to skip and blur. More than once, Frederick yanks him back into motion or out from a pitfall when his concentration fuzzes. After too many times, the older man regards him with annoyance creeping into his expression of concern.

“You may have a child’s span of memories, but you’re an adult,” Frederick grumbles. “So, talk about your problems like one.”

“I have an adult’s span of memories, excuse you. Can even say more than, though I didn’t ask for it,” Robin snaps.

Frederick’s face flinches into a contrite wince. “Forgive me, I forgot.”

A bark of laughter kicks out of Robin at the irony.

“I said forgive me for being distracted by my friend turning into some kind of draconic beast and fighting against good reason like a man possessed.”

Robin hikes up his shoulders and lengthen his furious stride, blowing up snow in show of outpacing Frederick. Even though two of his steps matches one of Frederick’s. One step, two steps, and Frederick is back in front of Robin, in his way, resolutely forcing Robin to a glowering stop. They mirror each other, furrowed brow for furrowed brow. Frederick says, “Despite everyone’s misconceptions, I’m not a caretaker that’ll mutely pick up after people. I feel you haven’t explained the full details of what’s wrong. And Robin, I want to help, but I can’t without more information.”

“Well I don’t understand what’s happening myself! I don’t understand, and I don’t _want_ to understand, Frederick!”

His yells echo down, beating on their shoulders, _frederick, derick, rick, ck_. Hot snickers tickle the back of Robin’s neck.

“I’ve never known you for hiding from the truths,” Frederick snaps back, words cracking over Robin like a whip. “Should I be telling Chrom that his best friend came back a coward, unwilling to face threats and dangers to himself?”

Enraged, Robin swipes blindly at Frederick, an overextended, over telegraphed swing of a fist. Frederick catches the hand with an unimpressed glare. When Robin tries again with the left hand, Frederick simply knocks him into the snow, asking, “How did you come back even less mature than when you left? Robin, what the hells is going on in your mind?”

Grima howls with laughter at the spectacle.

* * *

They both grow surly in the short days and the soaking white cold. Grima chatters at Robin in an incessant flow, words pelting him like heavy rain. He flinches from a harsh crackle of laughter and trips over numb feet at a smoldering hoot. Frederick watches him with a pinched mouth, pointedly prodding at their argument with his silence, shoving at Robin to reengage. Robin shoves back.

The ledge they set up camp on barely has room for the two of them to bunker down and Robin can hardly twitch to either side without threatening to tumble off the edge or into the fire. But the overhang keeps out the snow and the awkward angles keep out the wind.

“My mother,” Robin starts and doesn’t look as Frederick turns his attention towards him. Boxed in here, the only thing to do is talk. They’re cornered into conversation.

“A few times, the Grimleal nearly catch us. The refugees everywhere from the war was chaotic and we could hide in the crowd often enough, but there were a few times when the Grimleal nearly caught up on us. Due to Ferox’s waveringly official stance of neutrality, we spent a few years moving back and forth here. I was too young to remember how much the border guards turned a blind eye on the smugglers, but they certainly didn’t like fully armed Plegian elite trying to cross the border.

“Even though it was dangerous, we stuck to Ferox’s southern borders. My mother couldn’t stand the cold. One time we must have strayed a little too close to the border. It was my first time seeing and experiencing dark magic.”

He was a jittery brat, raised on the move and uncertain how to handle staying in one location for more than a month.

“Don’t remember much, too young. Was probably looking for trouble and my mother was tired from years on the run and trying to settle down somewhere for the first time. With Exalt Phillip raising higher hell than ever, she probably hoped that all of Plegia would focus their attention on Ylisse, rather than humoring the whims of some fringe cult hunting for a baby and a woman. Think I was with some other children and someone had a brilliant idea to run around the border guard station, play at warriors a bit around live steel. That’s how I accidentally ran into a Grimleal assassin trying to sneak in.”

Some flashes of panic and surprise, the hungry maw of purple digging into some Feroxian guard’s life.

His huff of breath fogs up the air. “Gave my mother a hell of a fright. We packed bags immediately after that.”

Frederick shifts into a more comfortable sitting position and takes the peace offering for what it is. “Ferox. That explains where some of the ethnic Plegian villages vanished to.”

“There were some Plegian villages?” Robin asks in weak surprise.

“Old. Established when the kingdoms were still unified. Hostilities chipped away at their numbers over the decades, but Exalt Phillip swung the final blow.”

“Unsurprising.”

Grima gives a low growl.

* * *

The next morning plunges directly into tensions. Robin has hardly any rest from Grima yanking against their confines all night, yelling meaningless curses and empty taunts. He barely dreams and when he does, harsh yells about his mother delaying the inevitable jars him out. The dragon screams against his skull, “If you rose to your destiny earlier, avatar, I would never have been defeated.”

“Shut the hells up,” Robin punches back.

He barely has cohesive concentration from the restless night and there’s no coffee in either of their packs. But he didn’t think he was so barely pulled together to suddenly be on the ground, spitting out dirty snow and blinking against the ice, groaning under Frederick’s weight. The snow tastes absolutely nasty and a horn is digging against the rocky ground with an uncomfortable grind. “Wuh, Frederick, what?”

“Is Robin back or am I still talking to Grima?”

Robin locks up in shock, lying limp. He wheezes out, “ _What_?”

“Where you ever going to share this with me or is this another _recent development_ ,” Frederick spits with frigid anger.

Tensing with defensiveness, Robin tries squirming in Frederick’s grip, trying to flip to the side so the damn horn doesn’t feel like it’s wiggling his whole skull against stone. “Why am I on the ground?”

“You’re staying there until you explain why you suddenly decided to try casting Nosferatu at me.”

“Get _off_ me. I don’t know why this started, something about Mount Prism jostled them awake. _Get off_.” Robin bucks Frederick off with a shout. He scrambles to his feet and tries meeting Frederick’s hard glares.

“That was a couple weeks ago,” Frederick growls. “And you didn’t think to mention this at all?”

“I had a handle on –”

“Well obviously _not_. Damn it, Robin.”

“ _Damn it, Frederick_ ,” he roars back. “This is why we’re going to Valm to meet Tiki.”

“Should I even let you meet her, given that Grima can apparently take over your body?” Frederick shoots back.

“Considering how Naga threw me off her holy grounds, there’s no other choice! Do you want me to meet Chrom like this?”

Frederick clamps his mouth shut at that, anger and betrayal rolling off him in waves. Harsh hands shove Robin forward. “Stay in my line of sight.”

Grumbling, Robin walks in front until they finally reach Port Ferox. Grima only tries to skewer and strangle Frederick two more times.

* * *

Lon’qu and Olivia drop unannounced into the unoccupied seats at the table while Frederick and Robin waited for their dinners. Robin blinks in surprise and says, “Lon’qu, Olivia. It’s been a while, we didn’t expect to run into you two.”

He leans back in his chair, the better to see the other three at once. Lon’qu says, “The Khan told us you two would arrive in town soon. We also need passage to Valm for business. It was decided best for us to accompany Robin, so Frederick can return to the Exalt.”

“Oh. Well.”

Olivia fidgets in her seat, sneaking peeks at Robin’s hood. “Guess you also have some, um, unfinished business, Robin.”

He nods tired and aware that hoods don’t help hide that something foreign crowds around his head. The hood only keeps the polite people from blatantly interrogating him.

“We don’t want to impose on your duties,” Frederick says, pushing away the half-eaten dinner as he focuses on their guests. Formalities, all can see he’s receptive to what Lon’qu and Olivia propose. He’s already been on the road for at least a month with Robin and away from Chrom’s side.

“It’s not problem,” Olivia reassures. “Really.”

“Go back to Chrom,” Robin tells him softly.

Frederick’s gaze cuts into Robin. He nods, eyes stern. “Very well. The least I can do is see you all off when the ship leaves. Robin, be careful. Be vigilant. I expect to eventually see you whole and healthy in Ylisse.”

Robin drinks to half-heartedly hide his mild smile. With false bravo, he says, “Surely we’re old hats at slaying draconic beasts by now. I’ll be safe.”

“Then it’s settled. The ship leaves in three days’ time,” Lon’qu says, then waves a waitress over so he and Olivia can order.

Returned to their inn room that night, Robin asks Frederick, “What do you intend to report to Chrom when you return to Ylisstol?”

“First, that you’re still a stubborn bastard.”

Robin makes an incredulous noise.

“Second, a full report. Mount Prism. The travel here. Your plans to meet with Lady Tiki. Grima.”

Now Robin’s expression twists into a scowl. He says, “I suppose you have to.”

“Yes, because clearly communicating with the Exalt simplifies more problems than it causes,” Frederick says drily.

He scrubs at his face in frustration, a wrist knocking against those stupid horns, thanks Grima. His nails scratch, grown out again. “I hate how little control I have in this whole business. I’m tired of the constant reminders of how little this body belongs to me.”

“I know,” Frederick says. “But if we need the Fire Emblem or Falchion, then we need to involve Chrom. If anything slips further in your hold on Grima, then we must prepare for another confrontation with the dragon. On a more immediate point, I expect a swift explanation with Lon’qu and Olivia since they’re accompanying you on this leg of your trip. None of this avoidance anymore.”

“I think Lon’qu would straight up stab me, rather than going with restraining and waiting an episode out like you do. Yeah, I’ll tell them. The three of us on a ship in tight quarters together, we’ll be going stir crazy on a normal voyage. I’ll just go ahead and set us all on further edge.” Gods, Robin could use rest.

Frederick bats away the sour humor with a glare. “You do that.”

* * *

Lon’qu does draw his blade on Robin once during the voyage.

“Worms,” Grima mutters and Robin spends half an hour imagining himself stabbing the dragon in the back over and over again with Falchion. The legendary blade would never accept him, but it’s a way to will away the time with an added benefit of aggravating Grima. Maybe if Chrom holds on with one hand and Robin with another, he’ll be able to shuffle around and wreck some damage.  

Grima snaps at him and he lays still in the narrow bed assigned to him, unmoving but snapping back.

Olivia hums an unending tuneless song, notes weaving back and forth in a low voice. I know you better this time, Robin thinks, than the first time.

The first time, Olivia spins in, then right back out of Robin’s field of interest. A momentary ripple in his attention while trying to wrangle a kingdom into shape around a seething war. That Inigo had enough time to spend around Lucina’s company and integrate into that crowd of comradery is a minor fluke. Olivia stuck to the Khans’ sides, not in Chrom’s haphazard army.

Thinking about her and Lon’qu, comparing the images and their different versions in Robin’s mind, hurts less than facing the differences in those he left in Ylisse.

A hazy memory of before. Sumia stumbles into Robin’s shoulder, the two of them laughing, drunk on wine and mirth. Her next step nearly sends her tumbling, but he snatches her arm and tugs her back upright, relieving the bottle from her grip in the same five some moves. Arms looped around each other, they fumble their way through a doorway and Chrom glances up from his desk.

Robin makes the strategic decision to fall onto the bed and flaps a hand or three for Chrom to join the giggling pile.

Chrom’s smile is radiant. “How many drinks did you two have?”

“Not enough,” Robin tries to say, “since you haven’t had any yet.”

At some point of time, Sumia steals the bottle back and waves it at Chrom. “Have some. ‘S good.”

The second go around, Robin rarely sees Sumia. The wedding sweeps through the castle and jostles him out of negotiations and research. They see each other every month or so, smiling over books. With Lucina’s birth, Robin made himself even more scarce.

And now, two parts put together as a mismatched whole. Grima burns her down out of the sky.

* * *

The tree stands as imposing as Robin remembers, overwhelming and magnificent, greater than any cathedral of faith. At least this time, the only blood spilled will be from nicks and splinters climbing the steps.

Robin’s sick of seeing white drifting everywhere and he squints at the branches waving into the clouds and sighs. He’s sick of high places. It’s been mountains and mountains and he wants the shifting hills of the desert. He just wants –

“I think we can part ways here, now,” Robin says to Lon’qu and Olivia. The Mila Tree is still miles to the west. Its shadow stretches cool and lazy in the warming sunlight. Robin keeps his back to the sunrise and his shadow basks on the winter’s dead, brown grass.

Lon’qu squints against the light at Robin. “As if.”

“Ah, Robin, I really don’t think we should split up yet. The tree’s still about a day away and well. If you do the climb by yourself and pass out without anyone knowing, that’ll be embarrassing for all of us.”

Ever the man of action, Lon’qu simply grabs Robin by the shoulders, spins him around, and marches him onward, heedless of Robin’s squawking. “Our business in Valm isn’t urgent,” Lon’qu says under Robin’s loud flailing. Olivia ducks around that whole situation and coaxes the carriage back into compliance. They continue striking their creaking way west.

“We continue escorting you,” Lon’qu says, like Robin can’t be trusted to take care of himself for a day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unfortunately, no more fairy tales. i've been procrastinating on updating this by writing other stuff.
> 
> [for an example of dumbassery i think of](https://the-progress-bar.tumblr.com/post/179702019562/i-swear-i-have-the-next-chapter-of-you-wore-out-a)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leg day, every day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why are my male Robins all like this.

Robin doesn’t immediately awaken Tiki. He sits on the clearing constructed in the crown of the Mila Tree, watching where the sky’s thin blue brushes against the leaves’ thick green. The view’s too obstructed to see the distant mountains or the distant sea. This could be a nest, a cradle in the sky that denies its roots on the ground.

He catches his breath.

Cathedrals tried to recreate the grand height, the organic complexity of the sacred trees, but their interiors are too dim, and no number of candles and thrown open windows can match the harsh sunlight beating against the shrine’s central monument. How can Naga ever notice the minute scurrying of men under her feet? No matter how hard they strive towards her attention, the ground and the problems of men are too far away and too small. Smoothed over by the distance.

A beat from Grima’s many wings carried them on the hot winds blowing off the fires below, covering several hours march in a fraction of the time. Heat rolled off them in waves and Robin’s small form clung to the dragon’s neck. Glazed eyes watched the scales shift under their limp body as Grima pined their conscious under a talon. There was nothing to watch anyways. By now, the destroyed towns are the same, the deaths are the same, the darkness is the same.

Sometimes, in the gritty expanse of a desert at night, Grima shook Robin loose and he tumbled into the dunes. Sand scratched up his exposed cheek. He stared impassively up at the stars and into the rancid glow of Grima’s gaze. The dragon leered, “Have you been brought so low, my avatar? Where’s your live coal, your crackling lightning, your ripping wind?”

“Where are all my loved ones?” the words shattered in pieces out of his parched throat.

Grima threw their head back and laughed. “A most appropriate answer.”

The sunset’s pinks and purples are dizzyingly vibrant, though that may just be the thin air. His muscles are stiff and protest getting up from the sprawl he spent the last couple of hours in.

Guest accommodations aren’t in the Mila Tree shrine’s architectural decision. But the central reception room is protected from the wind and the floor clean enough. He slides the cloak and the jacket off and sinks into sleep in a rough bed right then and there. He’ll wake Tiki up in the morning.

She finds him first. “Robin?”

He rolls his head towards the voice, and her concerned expression swims into view. The cold sunlight of early mornings bleaches half her face into bright white, a hazy halo glinting off her green hair. He squints.

“I didn’t,” he coughs to clear his throat and tries again, “I didn’t realize you were awake.”

“Then it’s only fair considering I didn’t know you were alive.”

His throat still has a mess stuck in it, so he shuffles into a sitting position and coughs again. “Well, uh. Good morning. I came back a few months ago. No, half a year ago. Give or take. Haven’t been keeping a calendar. But more importantly, coming back came with complications.”

Sharp nails tap against sharp horns and dull scales.

“I can feel the darkness of the Fell Dragon coming off you,” says Tiki, voice lilting down with the small creased pressed between her eyebrows.

“Sounds about right.” He smiles asymmetrical and crooked. “It’s good seeing you Tiki.”

* * *

Chrom still catches himself turning, mouth open, hand pointing, ears listening for advice never coming again. No, not never, there's a chance, he must never let that go, he must never give up, but –

Is it anger? Is it despair? Is it exhaustion, ascending to the Exalt’s throne alone, without the support he took for granted and never expected to leave so soon, not before a few more decades, not _like this_ , gone before a new era of peace without the Fell Dragon's shadow even started? Not like this, disintegrating to ashes with the older and more bitter members of court muttering, good riddance, that filthy Plegian would ruin Ylisse, don't even have to be put down like a sickly dog when its use is done.

And sometimes Chrom himself is the bitter one, why didn't Naga warn them earlier, why did Frederick unearth notebooks of plans and proposals, contingency plans made in case Robin fell in battle, gone but still able to lend a hand from beyond the grave, with this his will and Chrom’s inheritance.

The air to his left is too cold. Silent, without Robin's weighted regard and the whispers of cloth settling.

So, he goes out riding, searching, barely conceding to help. Lissa comes, because she is already on the road. Frederick comes to watch their backs. Sumia goes looking for other clues, other parts of Robin's tale. The rest of the Shepherds slowly spread out, doing their duties, keeping eyes out. Donnel goes home to Farfort. Gaius hands over the reins of Robin's spies to Frederick.

When the harvests are plentiful and Plegia isn't ripping out its own guts over Ylisse killing their king _again_ , for the third time, Chrom hangs up the robes and puts on the travel cloak and just. Searches. Pacing up and down his kingdom.

Chrom swallows the bitter pain, the grief, and looks, refusing to linger over the empty grave tucked anonymous is some Ylisstol churchyard, among gods knew who else because Robin doesn't belong to any Ylissian noble house, so his headstone can’t go anywhere better. Doesn't belong to any family because they burned out the Grimleal, Robin literally striking the finishing blow on his father twice over, mother nonexistent despite Sumia’s best efforts.

He refuses to linger over the words, _he's dead_.

How could Robin be dead, the man responsible for raising Ylisse and the Shepherds to an untouchable immortal elite? His mind retches and spits out the vile tasting thought. It's impossible, Robin can’t stay gone. In the heart stopping moment when Robin disappeared with a strangled yelp on Grima's lurching back, he still returned in defiance of the wide sneer stretched over his future double's face.

He must never give up.

* * *

His legs complain with the best of them on the way down the Mila Tree’s steps. In battle, his strength lies in striking hard and fast, weaving out of the way of oncoming attacks, dodging when Chrom would meet with a clash of steel swung with his greater strength. Robin’s dreaming of a pegasus to ride down by the quarter mark. Thankfully, Tiki packs light and he doesn’t have to help carry tomes and swords around for the convoy like the last time he visited the Mila Tree.

At the base, Lon’qu and Olivia wave in greeting at their arrival. Well, Olivia does. Lon’qu maybe lifts his hand in acknowledgement. The sun well and truly blazes with a late morning intensity.

“No trouble last night?” Robin asks.

“Nope, as I thought, it wasn’t that likely to run into bad characters so close to the Mila Tree,” says Olivia. “But I’m still glad we stayed to watch over the carriage overnight.”

Grima lifts an eye and bristles at Tiki’s stare.

Tiki says, “It is to my understanding that you two will be accompanying us to Fort Steiger? That’s what Robin told me on the way down from the tree.”

“Yes,” Lon’qu answers.

“We’re hoping you two can acquire horses at Fort Steiger so the trip east to the coast doesn’t take so long. Then Lon’qu and I will resume heading west into Valm for our mission,” Olivia pads over Lon’qu sharp curtness. “You and Robin can ride in the carriage while Lon’qu and I stay in the front.”

Robin lifts the curtain of cloth over the back entrance and gives a slight bow in amused jest, “After you, Lady.”

She smiles and climbs in. “Thank you.”

Lon’qu and Olivia swing into the seat in the front and set the horses moving. Robin stretches his legs out, best he can, while the wheels rattle and chatter in rough gossip with the path. He rummages through a basket of food and offers it to Tiki sitting on the bench opposite him. She splits a loaf of bread.

“As I mentioned on the way down,” she says after they’re done wiping away crumbs and settled into the ride, “I don’t think I can directly help you considering how adversely Naga’s powers reacted to you on Mount Prism. Instead, we can go through a more indirect route.”

“Yeah, I think it’ll have to be like before, where it’s my hand striking the finishing blow again,” Robin says and ignores as Grima sneers. “Problem is, they’re currently hiding in me somewhere and I have no idea how to draw them out. I can’t exactly reach into myself.”

The wagon strikes a particularly sharp pebble, jolting them all in their seats. “Sorry!” Olivia squeaks.

Tiki blinks away the distraction and says, “While I cannot fight the Fell Dragon with you, perhaps I can help ‘reach into’ you and drag them out. I can’t do it out in the open, somewhere like here, but perhaps at the locations of significance for the Fell Dragon. Like Origin Peak.”

“And Dragon’s Table,” Robin says in concession weakened by dread. “Origin Peak is technically in Plegian waters, but I don’t think they have the resources to secure it. Dragon’s Table though. That’s solidly in Plegia’s mainland. How are we supposed to reach that?”

“Hopefully, we’ll have solved our problem at Origin Peak. Otherwise, we’ll figure that out as the need arises.” Then Tiki diverges the conversation to small talk.

In a few days, they arrive at Fort Steiger. Lon’qu and Tiki secure the horses while Robin helps Olivia restock the wagon. The next morning, they’re ready to depart on their own ways, framed by the fort’s gateway entrance.

“We split ways here,” Lon’qu says.

“Safe travels,” Olivia says. “Send us a bird when your body is completely your own again. You have much to catch up on in the theaters of Ferox.”

“And the arenas too,” Lon’qu adds.

Robin nods and waves goodbye. He echoes, “Safe travels.”

* * *

They dream feverishly.

“My little songbird, please, you must eat.”

Their mother helps them sit up in the nest of heavy blankets and quilts, against a sliding hillside of pillows. She picks up a ceramic bowl from the bedside table, fingertips digging hard into the rims least likely to burn her with the boiling heat. The snowstorm outside finally stopped, they notice outside the window painted mostly white by the accumulated ice.

A spoon enters their attention, their mother holding out the soup. Please.

Eyes stare at them, and a hot breath runs over their hair, a wet brush smelling of sweet rot. The fireplace leaps higher, yanking against its confines, trying to explode out into the room, up the chimney. The sickness presses them back hard against the pillows and the hard headboard, something foreign dragging down their body from the inside. A vile presence clouding their awareness and their head rings like they’ve been listening all day to nails dragging against stone prison walls.

They feel like they're burning.

“Robin, wake up.”

He lifts his head and immediately winces at the pulled muscles in his neck, protesting his nap. It doesn’t help that the horns further weigh down his head.

“I’ve noticed,” Tiki says while Robin rubs the gunk out from his eyes, “that Grima seems to come to the surface in waves. Sometimes near, sometimes less so.”

“More so each day,” Robin croaks. “They quieted down on the approach to the Mila Tree, but now.”

“Yes, now,” the words grind, “here I am.”

Robin stops fighting against the ache in his neck and sinks his face into his hands.

“Ah,” escapes from Tiki in a quiet slip, dropping into the clouded stream of presence and emotion clogging up the space around him. The echo drags at their shoulders in the slightly dusty air of the inn room. Robin wishes there are more candles in the dim room, now that the sun has set. He hears the cough of the floorboards accommodating her shifting her weight back in consideration. She whispers, “That didn’t even come out of your mouth.”

Grima’s smirk shoulder-checks into Robin. He’s almost too tired to fight back – what even was that dream, not a memory – but he still mentally slams the strained and battered door between their minds as hard as he can.

“So, yes,” Robin says, like the man with no idea about what to do about the situation he landed himself into that he is.

Sitting there, hands muffling his voice, shoulders hunched over, Robin realizes that Grima’s been inhabiting his body for longer than he’s inhabited it by himself. The math is odd thanks to the time traveling overlaps, but.

“Chin up, Robin.”

He follows the order.

“I can’t help you unless you take charge in expelling Grima. If you lose focus, you’re doomed. If you give up, there’s no helping you.”

“Tiki –”

Her voice rises, “Where is he, our lieutenant general? Where is he, our tactician?”

She’s seen more wars than Robin. She’s lived longer, watched over longer, a power coursing through her, the cold fire of dragon breath, her eyes flashing.

“Stand up Robin. Face this fight. Have you been brought so low?”

Lucina stands before Robin across the desk crammed into his tiny, crowded office overflowing with maps and papers. The pommel on her Falchion digs into a stack of books threatening to smash someone’s toes when it finally falls over. The sunset’s fire lights the whole room in washes of oranges, clashing against the colder purples and blues. He’s at the point of yelling now, they both are, “How am I supposed to keep this army and your father alive if you won’t tell me what happens? You’re one of our greatest sources of information and you refuse to share with anyone. Stop _hiding_.”

“How am I supposed to tell anyone? If I tell you what happens, then it’s all going to change!”

“ _Then what’s the point of you traveling through time?_ What are you scared of, that’s worth risking all our lives by hiding from your fears?” His throat is sore the next day, and Chrom watches him reproachfully while he swallows honey by the spoonful, but never challenges him.

Tiki challenges him, “Where is he?”

And Robin rolls his shoulders back, slaps a padlock onto that tired door and barricades it, laying down traps to stall for time, and with a hoarse throat, says,

“Here.”

* * *

Sage’s Hamlet is the same small interruption in the sprawling fields and Robin’s glad they can pass through with few conflicts. They’ll have more than enough of that once they reach the harbor town proper.

“More boats,” Robin groans from his limp sprawl on the ground where they make camp for the night.

Tiki snickers, “There, there.”

“Tiki, I’ve been on so many boats now in the last few months, it’s inconsolable, it’s horrible. The only benefit out of Grima is air travel and I don’t even have that.”

Neither Robin or Tiki know how to fly on a wyvern, nor were the people of Wyvern Valley amenable to the two of them trying to cross the ocean with just a wyvern. No, the fact is, and Robin faces this with well-deserved dread, they’re going to have to find some private captain and ship willing to bring them to Origin Peaks.

By private captain, Robin means pirates. They must find pirates to board with.

He hates this wholeheartedly.

“Another benefit out of Grima,” Tiki says later because she’s trying to take the optimistic view, “is that people don’t really want to argue with two draconic beings demanding passages to odd islands. You’ve been wonderful standing around as an intimidation tactic.”

Robin grumbles, even if she’s right. The more calculating people look at Tiki’s green hair and ethereal grace and look at Robin’s scaled skin and violent horns and hang back in suspicion. The bolder ones take it as a challenge though. Still, it’s not like Robin doesn’t have experience managing a band of borderline criminals to work for him before.

Eventually, they find their probably-a-pirate ship, and Robin scrubs the ordeal out his memory. When one too many crewmember casts a motion to try stealing even more money out of what they already paid, Robin starts snarling at them and stop hiding his red eyes. It’s definitely not an excuse to vent frustration from trying to keep Grima corralled and caged in.

“Can’t you control your friend?” the captain asks Tiki.

“Can’t you control your crew?” Tiki shoots back while Robin pointedly drums his clawed nails against the table.

In their cabin that night, Robin says, “I almost want us to actually have to land on Plegia’s mainland. At least the Plegian smugglers are far more professional and more familiar.”

Tiki fixes him with a blank and carefully constructed small smile of confusion in response.

* * *

Origin Peaks is just as rancid and nasty as Robin remembers in all his memories. The volcano is calmer than the frothing, molten mess erupting in dramatic accompaniment to the army hacking its way to Grima’s awakened bulk. Lava oozes out the top, but there’s no lightning. Or smoke or ash. In fact, Robin prods at the idea, Grima might have been a culprit in nature’s agitation.

“Remind me again why we’re here?” Robin asks, unable to tear his eyes away from the volcano’s peak.

“It’s the closest we can get on land to Grima’s most recent corpse.”

Right. If not Naga’s spirituality, then desecration. If not desecration, then once more an origin of faith.

“Do either of us have any idea what we’re actually doing here?” Robin has to ask.

“No,” says Tiki while she surveys the hillside they’re on.

Eventually, she finds some charred patch of land to her liking. What metrics she uses, Robin has no idea. He nudges his foot against the ground, to test how soft it is. Given past events, he’s going to end up on the ground and would like a soft landing.

As if she’s talking about uncaging some small animal that accidentally wandered into the house and needs to be released back into the wild from the cage it’s been stuffed into, Tiki says, “Let Grima out, I’ll try to see if I can keep you conscious this time.”

“I really hope,” Robin says as he cautiously pokes the bemused and eavesdropping Grima with a mental spear, “that killing Grima will also somehow revert my body back to normal. Every time I so much as try to change outfits, these horns snag on every scrap of cloth. I’m also starting to really hate the nails.”

“Focus.”

“I am,” he doesn’t get to say as Grima comes roaring out and shoves him to the side.

He sees things in flickers. Pools of fire and lightening charred plants. Tiki ducking and weaving, shifting in and out of forms, dragonstone dancing in the air between her hands. His body ducking a blast of cold dragon breath. And something like chains, dragging at his limbs, a cold phantom metal.

Tiki can’t do this by herself.

Robin grits his teeth and yanks against Grima’s control, shuddering as he digs his fingers in, pulling his body back and shoving against Grima.

“It’s no good, they’re still in your body, Robin fight harder!” he hears muffled and secondhand.

Get out, he hollers at the dragon. _Get out of my body._

Purple writhes, black shrieks, red bellows, gold pops and sputters against spears of blue shimmering with power, crackling at impact into shards of shrapnel. The air’s too thick to let Grima out. The air’s too thin to support Grima. The dragon’s phantom body plummets down to the hungry sea without the magic to support its flight, the sandstorm strips away its skin and ligaments, the lava burns and hisses.

But the fish have picked Grima’s corpse clean, until only grime collects on the bones and there’s nowhere for the dragon’s awareness to go except sink its teeth into Robin harder.  

* * *

Robin's gone four years when they empty out his room. The books are packed away into cases to protect them from the sunlight and dust's damage. The drying ink is poured out, magic long expired, and the pens and inkwells are washed clean. The bed is made one last time.

Piles of moth-eaten clothing, papers crumbling at creases, what can't be salvaged from spending years sitting around unused is thrown out.

"Boy, you're grieving too hard," rumbles out of Basilio. Chrom winces.

“I know," he chokes out over the fourth glass of wine and clearly losing his mind, stuffed all up with too much uselessness. "But I haven’t figured out a way to move on yet. I keep thinking about what we could be, what kind of fate Robin would write for himself without Grima ruining his life. I can’t even ask the kids what that would look like. Never mind the destruction of the whole world, they barely know him beyond this timeline. Robin was forgotten within a few years in their world. What will happen to him in this one?"

“You want his memory honored?"

“I want him back. Sometimes, I wish Naga never told us there was possibility of his return. It would have been better than this mad, cruel hope."

“Aye, his passing is muddied and confused," says Basilio. "It's spoiled his sacrifice."

The soft, wounded noise pushes out of Chrom. Grima's swaying, shuddering back haunts Chrom's memories, leaving him stumbling and unmoored, bracing for the ground to fall out under his feet again.

* * *

He’s lucky that this body is still used to the long marches of campaigns. The soles of his boots are wearing concerningly thin in places, and Robin is mildly terrified of his mother’s old tales of burning feet in Plegia’s wastes. These boots served him on two round trips across the ocean, in a charge through a volcano, and scrambling around Grima’s back and in the snow. He’s sorry to see them go.

In a tiny, leather-skinned Plegian town, Robin buys a courier pigeon. The store owner looks between his coat and burning red eyes and Tiki rummaging around for writing materials, and charges them many gold pieces higher than Robin remembers prices being. “Hey now, you thief, do you think we’re gullible fools –”

“That’s a bird for _Ylisstol_ , you inconsiderate –”

“Trying to rob customers blind, what kind of scheme do you think you’re running –”

Tiki let’s out an explosive sigh as Robin continues to ignore her taps and shakes, too engrossed with arguing and leaning over the counter so hard, it looks like he’s about to crawl over. She writes on a thin scrap of paper, _H_ _eading to the Dragon’s Table. Will be delayed. Likely entering Ylisse through port at south end of Plegian border._

The counter shakes when Robin slams his fist down, “Fine!” and forks over the money. The bird jumps in surprise, feathers ruffling up its silhouette into an orb.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on other people’s heartache…

The dead dragon’s back buckles and starts to plummet. Wind whistles past Chrom’s ears in a different direction from before, a confusing mash of up across the battlefield. A horse screams in panic and there are alarmed yelps and shouts.

A voice flies over the chaos, yelling, _Father_.

The wind shudders the carcass again, like a child harassing a toy for more hidden sweets, and Chrom barely holds onto Falchion. Shaken out of his shock, he rounds upon Cordelia and the other Pegasus Knights. “Get us out of here!”

He barely notices Frederick yanking him onto a wyvern. Lissa and Maribelle and the other healers have rescue staves at the ready to pull the remaining fighters off Grima’s back closer to ground, just before impact.

He makes speeches.

He returns to Ylisse.

The numbness steals into his heart and he has no idea what to do with it.

* * *

So. Origin Peaks failed. This is two out of two for magical mountains letting Robin down. If by some future machination, the count increases to three out of three, he’s going to wholesale stop trusting magical mountains.

Winter doesn’t so much as visit the desert as have a fleeting acquaintance, then flounce off again. Robin lends Tiki his fur cloak during the night, since his clothing are better suited for blocking the grinding sand from his skin than hers. Naturally, she weathers the night’s chill better than him. Living high among the sagging clouds with Naga’s cold in her blood will do that.

They skirt over Plegia’s western mountain ranges, keeping away from any but the smallest villages. Replenishing water supplies is harder that way, but these folks are better at keeping secrets. The Grimleal’s touch on them is nonexistent or negative. Villagers don’t benefit from the cult’s golden coffers and only know the hot metal of its iron swords.

Plegia has … Plegia has recovered.

When Grima rose, the kingdom _emptied_. Wind howled and howled, and its people spilled away, escaping, running, crazed by the horror born out of their land, sand demons and mirages and dust spirits coalesced into a physical body, a hulking beast. They had no knight, no prince, in shining armor with shining blade, blessed as the phoenix are blessed. No damn king even, haven’t had a king for decades, not when a mortal wound felled the last true and righteous king on the battlefield and Plegia desperately made do with madness instead. They had no saviors, crushed on one side by the sea and on the other side by their enemies. So. Flight.

And with the wars washing across it constantly in unrelenting tidal crashes, its ports and trade barely clung together. Yes, Plegia had more gold than Ylisse thanks to a number of variables in Exalt Phillip’s raving conquests. But trade partners quickly weary of the constant threat that the buyers and suppliers on the other end of the long sea journey would suddenly be drafted or killed or bankrupt by the throne and the war. Plegia limped by.

Plegia still limps by.

Robin observes this silently. Hood tucked low against the sun’s glare. Scarf tucked high against the sand’s reflecting glare. He observes, as they walk east, as they walk south, as they leave behind one set of mountains on the horizon at their back, and see another set rise up on the horizon to their front. He observes this, how his campaign still scars part of the land, when they near the capital and its castle and its execution ground and its skeletons and pass around the walls at a far distance.

Even Grima is silent, made silent by the never-ending desert. The hissing shift of his feet in the sand talk for them both.

This is the land of his mother, his accursed father, his distant cousins, he dead ancestors, his blood and bones, the land he was born in but not raised in. This is the land of the stories his knows, the strategies he learned, the magic he commands. This is the land of his birthright.

Tiki and Robin arrive at Dragon’s Table when the hours of the day start lingering longer than the hours of the night.

* * *

 _Naga_ , he says to the small white candles, the dead-alive carved leaves, the metal and glass faces watching, _Naga, by the sea and the land and the sky, if you can hear me as these people believe, give the last shining blow the strength to land, with a heart shattering crack able to split stone_.

* * *

The cathedral of Dragon’s Table never finished its construction. It didn’t help that the battles of Chrom’s army sweeping in cracked and crumpled what had been laid down and the sand heavy winds scorched and scared it all further. They left the doors blasted open on their exit. A hundred-year process and the hulking skeleton of the cathedral still doesn’t have all its skin and meat attached.

“This won’t be like fighting your other body all those years ago,” Grima says, calm, too damn calm. Weeks and weeks of needling and prodding Robin, years of melting his bones, and now that the spires and stone and wooden skeleton pierce the darkening sky, they’re too calm.

“I gathered from Origin Peaks,” Robin growls back.

The dragon’s sneer nips his neck in warning. “Not like that either. No, here, at this blood-soaked alter and on this blood-soaked land, it will be different. It will be,” and even Tiki grimaces at the hot sweep of a ghost’s breath, “quite a different experience for you, my vessel.”

“You’re too calm,” Robin says, because this aggravates him. He can never find his footing with Grima, with their rage and this sea deep, sky deep calmness that smoothers him.

“Calm?” It sets his bones on a hard vibrate, like a struck tuning fork. “My avatar, you’ve never known calm.”

Tiki steps towards the open maw of the cathedral. “Let’s get this over with, Robin. Night’s setting soon.”

Robin steps after her into the building’s dark guts. Their steps send up puffs of dust and grind the sand into the marble floor’s cracks. The dust is almost overwhelming, the air musky with the barest linger of dead bodies. The air smells of time.

With each step, divine and wretched paired, the air comes alive as well. Magic drips into action, beckoning them on, begging, begging for its prodigal sons, at last, at long last. Sweet child, for sweet glory, here in the highest esteem from the lowest pits, the lord returned.

The master revived, the blood burning, the sacrifice slain, the master re _vived_ , _the lO **RD, the FelL D**_ ** _RAGO_** ** _N_** , death, glory, the gOD and its vessel, returned, _returned_.

Robin coughs, then keeps coughing, a dry hack clawing up his throat, a liquid fire in his lungs. Tiki helps him stagger through the hall and at last to the alter burned in his memory, first in tales then in reality lit by lightning.

“My avatar, you’ve never known calm,” Grima bellows against the screaming echoes of the magic yanking him apart and setting him on _fire_. Tiki lets go of his arm with a yelp and Robin chokes on the surprise as with one last rip –

Grima rises, a specter, their roars and breath tearing at Robin, a dry heat mounting, and he can hear the wind outside whipping into a screaming howl, accompaniment to the dragon’s melody, clawing into the stone bones. His coat snaps back from the dragon’s ghostly force and he squints through the dark. The carved nicks and details on columns and walls and ceilings snag the air and whistle at the echoes of Grima’s teeth bared and their bulk flickering at existence. Robin feels like he’s burning. He thinks he sees the shimmer of purple-red eyes in the corner of his vision.

“And you were especially _never_ to resist against me,” their yell hammers against Robin’s ears. A pair of eyes and a pair of eyes and a pair of eyes flash open at him and rows of bared teeth fill in. Claws hit the floor with a screeching power, shattering the stone with gouges. Their body forms, vast and huge, wings spread and stifling the air and blocking out the light from outside, until only the gleam of Tiki’s dragonstone shines on fangs.

Robin scrambles back and draws his sword. “Different” doesn’t quite encompass this.

Tiki challenges him, “Ready?”

He swallows against his dry throat and answers, “Yes.”

* * *

Robin looks at himself. Well. Looks for a given measure. It’s cold here. Cold, dark, flat, pressure squeezing him in and in the dark he looks at himself, this younger self, this half-man with only a few years memories. He looks at this body with different scars, hair falling differently just so. A younger face.

It stares at him limply, slack, worn out with shock and hovering into the shallows of sleep.

“Wake up,” he hisses at it, at this boy of himself. Even the sound compresses into heavy blocks that thud against the body’s chest. He fights against the dense dark to painfully wrap fingers over the body’s shoulders, thumbs digging into the collarbones, “ _Wake up_.”

He shakes it. Slowly.

His muscles burn, taxed from too many years a host to corrosive rot and rust. The body blinks at him and he screams into ever heavier blows, “Wake up!”

Oh, he’s been able to shuffle through the most recent memories, flicked through the pages, skimmed over the images, the words of Naga taunting, _if your bonds are strong enough_. How many years did this kid have, four, five? Robin had more, on the fluttering borders of a decade and look how that served him. Bo _nds_.

“You have to fight!” he yells, desperate. “You have to fight like how I couldn’t, you have to fight more than I did, you have to fight to the grain of your bones, you have to fight. _Wake up!_ ”

Mother, oh brother, he knows there’s no escaping for himself from this dead black, but the kid can’t do anything as he is by himself. So, Robin scoops up the core of himself, those stories and memories and _bonds, damn you Naga_ , and _shoves_ even when it triggers the threads of his being starting to pull apart.

* * *

Robin tumbles out of the way of another poisonous blow. The magic blisters and seethe off the half-present claws in waves. He flips out of the roll and darts in to land a strike, one, two. Darts back out in another dodge and ducks under the wings.

In the dimness, he strains his senses to the taste of magic coiling and unleashing and the rapid staccato of Tiki’s blows. Lights flash with the crackle of Robin’s magic flames and bolts. The setting sun throbs a deep orange into the hall in a flash of alignment.

Face this fight, he thinks and grits his teeth and swings.

Stand up, he thinks and barely dives out of the way.

You have to fight, he thinks and stands next to Tiki again, panting and sweating from the exertion.

The air sways to Grima’s command, shielding them and bolstering them in turn, the magic eager to please and jump to attention at its master's feet and command. Robin tries blasting it away with wind of his own, but the dark magic rushes back in, water filling a hole. It’s aggravating, because without the magic, he’s sure the dragon wouldn’t be able to hold even a ghostly image together. Never mind this shifting consistency of deadly solidity and mass.

Sure, they’re smaller than the form Robin knows best, with a back broad enough for a battlefield and a bulk massive enough to cast a castle in shadow. The hall’s geometry limits their size. They’re still a dragon many times his own size though, as demonstrated by Robin’s new trajectory through the air thanks to a swipe he couldn’t dodge.

Grima focuses on Tiki, batting Robin away to better snap and claw at her. Her much smaller dragon form skirts away from their range. Volleys of dragon breath scorch them and they release their own barrage in return. Robin, who would quite like to stay not on fire, harasses Grima from the side and the back with cuts and magic.

Go away, Robin tells the cathedral’s magic. No, it replies sullenly back and trashes when Robin tries to grab ahold of it and fling it away. No, our master, must serve, unhand us, it cries. The heavy weight of wings slam into Robin and send him sprawling and utterly losing his attention.

Cursing, he picks himself up and flings himself into the fight once again.

A blade shrieking against scales that are and aren’t there. A shudder and patch of numbness shaken off. Blue and purple fire, sniping and trading blows.

His whole body is going to be so sore when this is finished. They’re not going to get any traveling done tomorrow.

Robin’s coat protects him from the brunt of Grima’s dark magic. On a sleeve, the triumph of a general. (“He lured his enemies into a valley, a corner, a trap. A trap of geography and terrain. The enemy’s mighty, giant army was squeezed into a thin column, a weak little thing, to try and pass. And what do you think the general did, little songbird? Aye, he struck, from the hills and from the sky, for he saw his enemy’s neck stretched out bare and accepted the offered invitation to cut its head off.”)

Grima’s rage peaks when Robin’s strong wind buffets them into broken pillars and into thin gaps between wide columns, constricting their wings. As they spasm to get out, Tiki swoops in with dragon claws and Robin sprints in with a plunging blade.

On the other, the cunning of a princess. (“‘Beware those that call themselves your friend,’ the note reads, ‘for among your friends hide a den of enemies.’ But ah, thought the princess, why shall I trust this nameless note itself? For a name carries the burden of an honor and on that honor I’ve tied our bonds. It would not go amiss to test those bonds though, the princess thought further, for she knew how times change and how deep desires hide in men, so deep that we are blind to ourselves until it is dredged up by those who wish us ill. So, she called her men at arms and tested them. She commanded them, ‘Strike me down, so I know your loyalties are true.’”)

The memories flow through him.

* * *

“Why do you fight for Chrom?”

Robin looks over at Sumia in question.

She colors. “Not, not as an accusation, or anything. I’m glad, I’m _glad_ , you’re at his side, at all our sides, but. Well, most of us have known the Exalt line for years, our families are all tied together, so we joined out of those old ties, but you don’t have those kinds of responsibilities. It’s not like Chrom demands any of us fight for him.”

He sets the book to the side and turns in his chair to better face her. “I owed him. But that didn’t last as my reason for long. I am no Ylissian noble, I have no noble creed and crest to uphold and inherit. But just like you, I have my responsibility and my loyalties. I have my bonds that I’ve forged now with Chrom and all the Shepherds. It may be younger than your bonds, but I don’t think they’re any weaker.”

* * *

Suddenly, Robin is quite literally on fire.

Tiki jumps away from him in startled surprise and even Grima draws back in confused and wounded consideration. Robin feels a singular brief flash of sympathy with the beast because he also has absolutely _no_ idea what’s going on.

Light flickers into the cathedral hall and Robin can see the arena clearly now thanks to his horns dissolving into flames. A hot tickle spreads like a deep flush over his cheeks, down his neck, and over his body. The claws on his fingers spark then catch, fire spreading over the back of his hand and down the length of his sword. It doesn’t _burn_ , not with heat, just a warm red cackle.

Robin has no idea what’s going on, but that’s been the running theme of his life this past almost year, so.

Grima must have enough of humoring whatever this is and barrels back into the attack. Robin sidesteps the swipe and swings his flaming sword. It cuts and Grima lets out a high scream of pain, rearing back. The wound continues burning unnaturally, before finally acquiescing to reality and going out. The smell joins the sharp tang of the magic saturated air.

Wildly, Frederick’s voice suddenly barges into Robin’s thoughts, _pick a god_.

If he had the breath for it, he’d start laughing uncontrollably. Cold fire. Of course.

Well, who’s Robin to question a gift like this. He rushes Grima and now the dragon shifts their focus onto the larger danger he poses.

(Robin has a nagging thought, about hearts and blades and whose are whose and he picks at the idea, over seas and deserts, that Grima can’t strike him, like he can strike them. Grima’s a shade of a ghost and depends on an anchor. Robin’s alive on his own right.)

Grima’s size has a harder time dodging and backing away from Robin’s onslaught. Each hit that connects burns and chews at the dragon and their surrounding magic.

Crazy-eyed and ready to be _done_ , Robin finds himself clinging and clambering on the dragon’s stinking, crumbling arms and back. There’s a confused shout from Tiki, but she keeps up wearing Grima down so Robin can safely ignore her in favor of digging his feet in for a solid foot hold. Then he grips the burning sword in hand over hand and plunges.

When the sword pierces Grima’s heart, a crack rings through the hall, the crack of stone shattering.

* * *

“One last tale for the road,” Modron says to her son, adjusting the coat she stitched together for him, checking the sword and spell books they bought together. “One last tale, I’ll keep it short.”

The desert burns and the desert freezes as the sun and the moon take turns laying their hands upon the earth’s cheek. By day, the spirits dance in clouds of dust, shimmering with the insincere allure of mirages. By night, the beasts hunt, spurred by the chill and stars watching in spectacle. “Greetings,” they say to the sun, the great firebird, as it rises. “Partings,” they say to the firebird as it sinks into rest.

“You’re killing us,” it hears on midday and it turns its cruel, proud beak down to see who in its all-seeing gaze says such.

“Without death, there is no life,” it says to the crows languishing in shadows, tongues parched dry and feathers molten hot.

“Without heat, there is no growth,” it says to the yellowing and browning folds of leaves.

“Without light, there is no knowledge, and I see all,” it says onto the desert and bedrock.

“Seeing is not knowing,” the small voice says. “You burn so hot, twisting firebird, do you know ice and cold? How the depth of water chills and heals, how the shadows protect, and the mountains’ ice nourish? Proud firebird, you are a grim agent of ruin.”

The sunlight flashes upon an unbreakable needle and a moon-chosen hero mounts the sky, riding the clouds, in pursuit of the tyrant. At last, in the dark rainbow of sunset, they fight.

“And what do you think,” Modron asks her son, “of the firebird sun and the ice dragon moon?”

“Though the sun gives light for life to grow, it kills with its burns. Though the moon gives darkness for life to heal, it kills with its freezes. We do need both, but we certainly can’t let either rule over us and crush us. In the end, our fate is in our hands, not attributed to some more powerful being,” her son says.

“Yes,” she says, “Wide eyes watching, and sharp mind thinking, strike your path and stay on it. My son, you will be the hand behind great things. Travel safe.”

* * *

If Robin doesn’t have to sail on a ship again for the coming years, it’ll be too soon. He breaths in the spring-summer air. Flowers burst out of their tightly wrapped buds. Tiki sneezes from the riots of color and pollen.

Other passengers on the ship trail off into the small harbor town, but Robin leads Tiki out onto the road. The meadow land grow eagerly under afternoon downpours and the path is soft from the moisture. The gentle cleanliness eases the bruises and aches.

After a simple lunch, they rest in the fields and Robin sinks onto the damp grass and the cool ground. He drops boneless and lets his thoughts fall away. The sounds and murmurs of birds and nature filter through in drifting echoes.

“You callous dog, I can’t believe you.”

Robin startles awake and surges up. The afternoon sun paints the air with rich gold, flooding his skin with an orange glow. Behind him, Robin hears Tiki shifting, her voice light with amusement. “Hello, Exalt.”

Chrom stands before Robin, cloak shifting with the breeze’s playful touches. Thank the gods someone finally swapped out the ragged cloth for something with even ends. Numbly, he grabs onto Chrom’s outstretched hand and lets himself be hauled up into a standing position. Chrom keeps holding onto his hand with a gentle smile as he runs a light thumb over the unmarked skin.

His first words to Chrom are, “You’ve changed.”

Then, “Well, no, your haphazard outfit certainly hasn’t. Who let this outrage continue?”

There are the beginnings of folds in the corners of Chrom’s eyes and there are faint scars on his arms that Robin makes unhappy noises at while prodding the silvery lines. The confidence of kings sits in Chrom. A measured certainty learned from ruling Ylisse grounds Chrom’s stance. Chrom stands patiently with a quiet relief while Robin runs his hands lightly over the taller man in inspection.

In Robin’s memories, he carries the terror of watching the fire in Chrom’s eyes shifting into a muted desperate pain, jaw clenching unwillingly around the gasp the lightning strike punched out of his lungs and locked up with arches of electricity. The waves of Risen, the tensions with Plegia, Emmeryn’s fall all couldn’t bank the live energy propelling Chrom ever forward. In his memories, he wished nothing ever would, but –

Now he stands grounded and as well rooted as the Mila Tree, the fire traded for a calm glow and Robin’s so grateful.

“There are better places –”

“No, shut up, take me home, of course there are better places to sleep than on the ground.” Robin gasps around the lightheaded buzz of, gods, finally seeing the end to this world-trotting tale. An end to these dragons, good riddance. He can finally rest and recover, and relief slams into the emptiness left from burning out Grima. “Take me home, I want a _bed_ to sleep in.”

The laugh is knocked out of Chrom as they collapse into the hug, arms wrapped tight around each other, Robin soaking in the warmth and glad that those damn horns are gone, or he would have accidentally skewered Chrom right in the neck with that move.

“You understand why I couldn’t come back earlier.”

“You could have at least said something – _Robin_.”

Robin thumps him in the arm again with his smile buried into his shoulder. Chrom huffs and says, “Yes, I understand. Welcome back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Chekov’s cathedral. I wrote the fairy tale of the first chapter in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and opened the story with a cathedral and made various mentions of cathedrals and now finally the payoff from all these cathedrals. Surprise, somehow religious buildings are a main plot point. I’m shocked too. I’m so unqualified to try pulling a Victor Hugo. 
> 
> Also, “You callous dog, I can’t believe you,” is one of my best lines of dialogue and I await the day I come up with something better.
> 
> [for those like me that like reading director cuts about fics](https://the-progress-bar.tumblr.com/post/182233485362/you-wore-out-a-path-recap)


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